Real Estate

ATLANTA -- The Fulton County Department of Housing and Human Services' Office of Housing and Community Development are hosting a foreclosure prevention fair on Saturday, Sept. 24.

The fair will be held at Atlanta's Westlake High School from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Counselors will be on hand to provide foreclosure counseling and assistance. The counselors will help homeowners assess their current situation and determine if the homeowners qualify for the Obama Administration's Making Home Affordable program.

The Making Home Affordable program helps homeowners get refinancing or loan modifications to help them stay in their homes.

Participants need to bring two copies of the following documents to obtain assistance at the fair:

This is a warning to Agents and a reminder to the public to be careful who you chose to represent you in a real estate transaction. I have recently heard some stories that have taken place locally and want to send this reminder to everyone. It is a violation of the ethical requirement for licensure in Georgia to represent a buyer or seller in a matter that the Agent is unfamilliar with.

The REALTOR® Code of Ethics - Article 1 starts: "When representing a buyer, seller, landlord, tenant, or other client as an agent, REALTORS® pledge themselves to protect and promote the interests of their client."

ATLANTA -- Metro Atlanta's foreclosure rate slowed by the middle of 2011, but remains among the metros with the highest rates.

Atlanta had 44,1560 foreclosure filings from January through June, down about 16 percent from the first half of 2010. This gave Atlanta the 16th highest rate of foreclosures, according to RealtyTrac, which publishes the largest list of foreclosures in the country.

The company defines a foreclosure as default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions.

The next years of real estate are not going to be positive for homeowners. In fact, it’s estimated that in 2012 over 60% of all home sales will be foreclosures or short sales. This means that the banks will control the pricing of more than half the real estate market and we can expect continued declining values. This idea may not sit well with many after the mortgage meltdown and moral hazard issues we had over the past five years.

Further, we at Sellect Realty believe that it will be another five to seven years before we see home values near their previous peaks and then we expect a plateau for several years to follow before growth. Currently our market is still declining. Despite month-over-month gains we have had another drastic decline in home values over the past 12 months. According to the recent statistics released by Realtor.com the average listing price decreased by 11.42% from June 2010 to $250,933.